Hair Loss Cure 2020 | Hair loss blog with the latest news updates.

Update: There are now various online sources that offer coupons with huge discounts for drugs such as generic Finasteride if you are purchasing them with cash and without any insurance. You need to print the coupon and take it to the pharmacy with your prescription.

Generic Finasteride 1mg (Branded = Propecia)

In November 2013, US-based Merck’s patent on hair loss drug Propecia (made up of Finasteride 1mg) finally expired. Thereafter, numerous generic versions of Finasteride 1mg have come into the US market at a small fraction of the cost of Propecia. I assume the same is true in other countries and blog readers are free to post their findings in the comments to this post.

Today, I called or visited a few major pharmacies in the US to get more information on the cost and country of origin of manufacture of these generic drugs, as well as to find out the name of the company that manufactures these products. If I buy a generic drug, at the very least, I want to check out information on the company that is manufacturing the product and try to make sure that the company has not been frequently cited for bad practices or worse.

Several pharmacists I talked to were uncertain about whether a company made or just packaged these products, but I tried to check my findings online and hopefully there are no errors in the below table.

5mg (Branded = Proscar)

It should also be noted that Merck’s patent on benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH — aka prostate enlargement) drug Proscar (made up of Finasteride 5mg) expired as far back as June 2006. Thousands of people have since been purchasing generic versions of Finasteride 5mg and then cutting each pill into 4 pieces with a pill cutter (i.e., essentially taking 1.25mg of Finasteride per day to treat baldness rather than BPH). This method always works out to be a lot cheaper than purchasing generic Finasteride 1mg pills.

Most hair transplant surgeons are willing to prescribe generic Finasteride 5mg pills to combat hair loss, even though the 5mg dosage has officially only been approved to treat BPH. Therefore I also decided to add information on generic Finasteride 5mg in the below table. I have been taking generic 5mg Finasteride pills for years to help my hair, although I take the 1 quarter (1.25 mg) pill every two days rather than daily. FYI — The half-life of Finasteride is 6 hours.

Generic Finasteride Cost (1mg and 5mg)

According to a pharmacist I talked to at Walmart, there are numerous types of discount cards available these days that will get you $50 off a prescription. She said she was not allowed to tell me where to get such cards, but they are easy to find.

Also note that at Walgreens, the 30 generic Finasteride 5mg pills made by Teva Pharmaceutical (Israel) will only cost $10 rather than $84 if you enroll in the Walgreens prescription savings program for $20 per year. Other pharmacies probably also have savings programs.

Note: Prices and brands at the same pharmacy chains may vary by state. Also keep in mind that many stores will price match.

Pharmacy Name	Generic Finasteride (1mg) — 30 pills	Company Name (Country of Manufacture)	Generic Finasteride (5mg) — 30 pills	Company Name (Country of Manufacture)
Costco	$13	Actavis (India)	$12	Aurobindo Pharma (India)
CVS	$70	Camber Pharmaceuticals (India)	$82	Camber Pharmaceuticals (India)
Rite Aid	$80	Aurobindo Pharma (India)	$76	Aurobindo Pharma (India)
Safeway	$60	Actavis (India)	$40	Accord (India)
Sam’s Club	$37	Camber Pharmaceuticals (India)	$26	Actavis (India)
Target	$83	Aurobindo Pharma (India)	$9	Camber Pharmaceuticals (India)
Walgreens	$80	Dr. Reddy’s (India)	$84	Teva Pharmaceutical (Israel)
Walmart	$44	Hetero Drugs (India)	$9	Camber Pharmaceuticals (India)

Propecia and Proscar Prices

Note that if you do not want to take generic Finasteride, the cheapest price for 30 pills of Propecia (made by US-based Merck) is $30 at Walgreens if you are enrolled in their prescription savings program. 30 pills of Proscar (made by Merck) will also cost $30 at Walgreen’s if you are enrolled in their prescription savings program. I wish I had known about this program before!

For most people, 30 pills of Proscar will last for 4 months after cutting each pill into 4 pieces and taking 1 daily. For me, it will last for 8 months, so I would rather purchase Proscar at this low price rather than generics.

If Walgreen’s stops offering this discounted price, the typical price of 30 pills of Propecia at most pharmacies is around $100 and the typical price of 30 pills of Proscar at most pharmacies is $150-$200. At that point, generics are a no-brainer.

The generic pills that I currently use are the 5mg ones made by Camber Pharmaceuticals. I hope to send one of the pills to a lab to test and make sure that they are identical to Proscar. A local custom pharmacy that I contacted did not offer such a service. Perhaps I need to go and approach a university’s chemistry lab?

Photo of my generic Finasteride 5mg pill:

Dr. Coen Gho

Around five years ago, Dr. Gho became the most talked about hair transplant surgeon on hair loss forums (replacing FUE pioneer Dr. Ray Woods in popularity). Dr. Gho claimed that he could: extract donor hair from the back of the scalp; implant it in the frontal or crown region recipient site; and yet the donor region would still regrow all its original hair while the recipient site would also grow the new (transplanted donor) hair as is expected in all hair transplants.

His method would never lead to donor hair depletion at the back of the scalp (the biggest drawback of hair transplants). In essence, this represented a cure for hair loss as you could keep getting hair transplants and not deplete donor hair. Perhaps this strategy only works 2 or 3 times and I missed that in case Dr. Gho ever said so. However, even if it worked only twice, such donor hair multiplication or regeneration would essentially be a cure for hair loss for those at Norwood Scale 2 to 5.

Dr. Gho was already reasonably well known online even 10-15 years ago, but two things helped him become truly renowned starting around 2010:

His Netherlands based company’s focus on documenting procedures via well made videos, including on local or internet celebrities (e.g., see here and here).

His appearance on The Bald Truth radio show.

Watch this video on YouTube

Dr. Gho can be cocky at times, with the best example being his insult (“If he had opted for our technique, Wayne would have avoided looking like Quasimodo”) of Wayne Rooney’s pretty decent hair transplant.

Dr. Gho’s Hair Stem Cell Transplantation (HST) Technique

Dr. Gho’s partial longitudinal follicular unit transplantation (PL-FUT)” Hair Stem Cell Transplantation^TM(HST) technique details are presented here. It does make logical sense to me that some leftover stem cells regenerate donor hair while the transplanted relocated stem cells also grow hair in the previously barren recipient area.Dr. Gho has also had his work published in some prestigious journals (e.g., see here and here).

My Thoughts

I initially used the word “maybe” in the title of this post, when describing Dr. Gho as being the original hair regenerator. This was because ever since Dr. Gho came on the scene, a number of other hair transplant surgeons have claimed to be able to do the same. However, most of these surgeons have little evidence to support their claims or are just in the initial research and experimentation phase of their work. Some studies do describe successful hair regeneration from transected follicles.

This is not to say that Dr. Gho’s results are as revolutionary as one would have expected after all the great publicity he has received and after the initial excitement generated from his journal publications. I have serious doubts about how successful his regeneration/hair multiplication is (hence my use of the word “maybe” in the title of this post).

Online hair loss forum posts have largely been skeptical about Dr. Gho’s ability to regenerate hair via his “partial longitudinal follicular unit transplantation (PL-FUT)” Hair Stem Cell Transplantation^TM technique. Some people think that even if the technique works, in all likelihood the donor hair and the recipient hair will both be thinner than normal. One of the studies from Dr. Gho that I linked to earlier concludes that the hair in both sites is of the same original thickness and caliber.

A number of hair transplant surgeons such as Dr. Ray Woods and Dr. William Rassman (via the no longer operating hasci-exposed website) have also expressed serious doubt about Dr. Gho’s technique. Dr. Woods does suggest that he and others have seen a 5 percent regeneration of transected hair follicles, and this is a fascinating phenomenon. Why can’t scientists/surgeons do better than 5 percent?

Irrespective of the probability of HST regenerating donor hair or not, most of Dr. Gho’s patients who have posted online seem to like their hair transplant results. So thankfully, the doctor at the very least seems to be a good hair transplant surgeon.